1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control of a system for managing business operations by a To-do task.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since electronic documents have been playing a central role in business operations, a system that can manage the electronic documents in association with the business operations has become increasingly necessary. For that matter, a workflow system is known as general solution means. The workflow system previously defines a flow of business operations as a workflow, and documents necessary for each processing of the defined workflow are attached to perform the processing. The processing is referred to as an “activity”.
For example, in an approval system, the workflow of “CREATION (GENERAL CLERK)→INVESTIGATION (MANAGER)→APPROVAL (GENERAL MANAGER)” is previously created. When a document of final decision is processed, an application document is attached at a state of “CREATION” of the flow, and approvals are given to the application document by a manager and a general manager when “INVESTIGATION” and “APPROVAL” are carried out in the flow.
However, since delicate settings such as user roles or flows need to be previously arranged in the workflow system, it takes too many hours to create the system when the system is used for small business operations. Further, since a workflow engine needs to be provided to control a complicated flow, the system increases in price and size.
Therefore, in small user circumstances as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-123071, methods for readily associating the electronic document with the business operations are in many cases adopted by using a document management system and a To-do list function thereof.
In such a system, each user can provide a document with a flag such as a To-Do flag in the document management system, and can describe job contents on the document. With these arrangements, the association between the document and the business operations to be performed on the document can be realized.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-123071 allows another user to add an item to the To-do list to realize a job flow with the To-Do list.